The cost of streaming around the world

When cutting back on household budgets, one of the first things we’re told to do is to stop discretionary spending on streaming services. But are subscriptions to services like Netflix and Disney+ really a budget breaker? Or are they actually the one little luxury that we can afford? The answer might depend on where you live.

To find out, Finder analysed the cost of streaming services in 13 countries by looking at the average cost of Disney+, Netflix and Amazon Prime. To level things out, we also looked at the average monthly income in each country. We then ranked the countries based on the average cost of streaming services as a percentage of the average monthly take-home pay.

Of the 13 countries, India is the least affordable country to subscribe to streaming services, with the average cost of a streaming service accounting for 2.77% of the average monthly income. That’s a far cry from all the other countries included in the research, with streaming costs in those countries making up less than 0.50% of their monthly income.

Australia is the most affordable country to enjoy streaming services, with the average cost just 0.15% of the monthly income. The Netherlands and Switzerland weren’t far behind at 0.17%, followed by Canada (0.20%), the United States (0.22%) and New Zealand (0.22%). Other countries where streaming services won’t break the bank include Ireland (0.24%), Germany (0.25%) and France (0.26%).

Average cost of streaming services as a percentage of monthly income

Where in the world can you find the best-value streaming services?

Just because the product is more affordable in one country doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting the best bang for your buck. Lower monthly prices could actually indicate that the content library is a lot smaller. To account for this, we also looked at the size of the content libraries in each country and ranked the countries based on the average cost per title across Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime, according to JustWatch data taken on 10 June 2020.

It’s widely known that Netflix in the United States has one of the most impressive streaming libraries in the world, but you might not know that it also has the biggest Amazon Prime library, at a whopping 31,167 titles. With their big content libraries, both the US offers the best bang for your buck out of the 13 countries, with the average cost per title across all three streaming services coming out at a measly $0.0008. Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom also average at $0.0008, while New Zealand ($0.0010) and India ($0.0010) weren’t too far behind.

The country where you’ll get the least value is the Netherlands, with the cost per title coming in at $0.0032. Switzerland ($0.0030) also provided slightly less value compared to the other countries, while countries like France ($0.0026), Spain ($0.0024) and Germany ($0.0023) were in the middle of the range.

Looking for a better deal on your streaming subscription?

If you’re on the hunt for a better deal or looking to add another subscription service to your entertainment budget, you can check out our comprehensive streaming comparisons here.

• Methodology

  Subscription costs

  Subscription costs were sourced from Disney+, Huffington Post, Amazon Prime, Comparitech and Netflix.

  Number of titles

  Library sizes for Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ were taken from JustWatch. Where Netflix Kids was available, we included it in the library size for Netflix. Netflix Kids was not an available option on JustWatch for France, Italy and Spain, and was therefore not included in their total library sizes.

  Average monthly income

  We used the adjusted net national income per capita (US$) from the World Bank. We then divided each figure by 12 to find the approximate monthly income.